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crazy story. makes you wonder how widespread this sort of thing is.
Quote:
It might seem like a crazy stunt that you would never think anyone would pull off, but it officially happened. A developer at an undisclosed “critical infrastructure company” was caught outsourcing his job to China for less than one-fifth of his six-figure salary. From there, the developer could sit back and relax.
A 2012 case study from Verizon brought forth the story of the sneaky developer. Only known as “Bob”, he worked at the unnamed company for a quite a long time, and was earning “several hundred thousand dollars a year.” Plus, he received excellent performance reviews along the way, noting that he was one of the best devs at the company, and that his code was very well-written.
However, Bob’s code wasn’t actually his code, but rather the job of Chinese workers whom Bob paid around $50,000 a year (which says that Bob was being paid around $250,000 a year). Instead, Bob surfed Reddit, watched cat videos, browsed eBay, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and then sent an email to management at the end of the day summarizing that day’s work (of the Chinese workers, that is). Developer fired for outsourcing job to China - SlashGear
Actually Bob is a Genius. I think that speaks more to the failings of the interviewing process and poor management skills. Bob took advantage of a loophole in the system and he got paid.
I feel sorry for the Chinese guy. He is out of work now. The company should hire that guy.
I doubt he was fired for doing that directly. He probably had a non-disclosure or non-solicitation agreement that was violated by this outsourcing.
Hiring offshore contractors is hardly a loophole...it is very common practice. You just have to make sure that sensitive data isn't released, which Bob obviously did by giving out his personal login credentials instead of setting up secured, restricted access to offshore resources.
The article is written as if he "got caught cheating" which if that is the case I can tell you this article is fake. Instead of working entirely himself he took a portion of his pay and choose to manage a team with it. With a salary of $250k this should be expected.. It's a salary big enough to hire a small team of american developers.. How would it matter if he showed up with 2 or 3 american developers in person instead of 2 or 3 chinese developers remotely? The company is still getting 3 developers and a manager for the price of one developer.
I doubt he was fired for doing that directly. He probably had a non-disclosure or non-solicitation agreement that was violated by this outsourcing.
Hiring offshore contractors is hardly a loophole...it is very common practice. You just have to make sure that sensitive data isn't released, which Bob obviously did by giving out his personal login credentials instead of setting up secured, restricted access to offshore resources.
Probably the writer on Slashgear changed the story around some to hide the actual scenario. I think it is pretty smart, but yes, Bob the highly-paid "developer" would definitely have violated his employment contract in many ways. It is a clever scenario, and probably happens more often than we are aware of.
Lots of work is indeed outsourced, for some jobs, there is no turning back. Now that Indian and Chinese wages have been going up, some of the same type of work is being outsoucred to other lesser developed countries. It goes on and on. The prevasive use of the Internet worldwide allows some outsourcing to take place much more easily than it had in the "old" days of the 1990s.
Probably the writer on Slashgear changed the story around some to hide the actual scenario. I think it is pretty smart, but yes, Bob the highly-paid "developer" would definitely have violated his employment contract in many ways. It is a clever scenario, and probably happens more often than we are aware of.
Lots of work is indeed outsourced, for some jobs, there is no turning back. Now that Indian and Chinese wages have been going up, some of the same type of work is being outsoucred to other lesser developed countries. It goes on and on. The prevasive use of the Internet worldwide allows some outsourcing to take place much more easily than it had in the "old" days of the 1990s.
The sad thing is that if Bob would have approached his boss and asked if he could do this, I almost guarantee it would have been allowed. Contract employees don't count towards headcount restrictions, and if he is paying for it out of his own current salary, I can't see an employer ever saying no to that. Assuming the writer was 100% correct (which I question as you do), Bob should have been honest about his proposal and he most likely could have enjoyed that arrangement for years.
As others mentioned, I think his being fired is more about informational security. Any work that an employee does is bound to the employment contract and becomes the sole property of that said organization. This Chinese employee was not bound to those employment contracts and thus had final say in his intellectual property (in this case the code). HE applied, they interview HIM, HE signed the contracts, and they hired HIM. The Chinese man never did any of those things. If Bob was really shrewd, he would have started his own company developing code and done the exact same thing. Companies would gladly pay him for his coding skills at a much higher pay than the Chinese man would request.
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